Are there such things as moral facts? If so, how might we be able to access them? Peter Singer started his career as a preference utilitarian and a moral anti-realist, and then over time became a hedonic utilitarian and a moral realist. How does such a transition occur, and which positions are more defensible? How might objectivism in ethics affect AI alignment? What does this all mean for the future of AI?

Peter Singer is a world-renowned moral philosopher known for his work on animal ethics, utilitarianism, global poverty, and altruism. He’s a leading bioethicist, the founder of The Life You Can Save, and currently holds positions at both Princeton University and The University of Melbourne.

Topics discussed in this episode include:

Peter’s transition from moral anti-realism to moral realism

Why emotivism ultimately fails

Parallels between mathematical/logical truth and moral truth

Reason’s role in accessing logical spaces, and its limits

Why Peter moved from preference utilitarianism to hedonic utilitarianism

How can humanity survive the next century of climate change, a growing population, and emerging technological threats? Where do we stand now, and what steps can we take to cooperate and address our greatest existential risks?

In this special podcast episode, Ariel speaks with Martin Rees about his new book, On the Future: Prospects for Humanity, which discusses humanity’s existential risks and the role that technology plays in determining our collective future. Martin is a cosmologist and space scientist based in the University of Cambridge.

“There are basically two choices. We’re going to massively change everything we are doing on this planet, the way we work together, the actions we take, the way we run our economy, and the way we behave towards each other and towards the planet and towards everything that lives on this planet. Or we sit back and relax and we just let the whole thing crash. The choice is so easy to make, even if you don’t care at all about nature or the lives of other people. Even if you just look at your own interests and look purely through an economical angle, it is just a good return on investment to take good care of this planet.” – Alexander Verbeek

The recent IPCC report concludes that, if society continues on its current trajectory — and even if the world abides by the Paris Climate Agreement — the planet will hit 1.5°C of warming in a matter of decades, and possibly in the next 12 years. And every half degree more that temperatures rises is expected to bring on even more extreme effects.

There are already a number of do-it-yourself (DIY) genome editing kits on the market today, and these relatively inexpensive kits allow anyone, anywhere to edit DNA using CRISPR technology. Do these kits pose a real security threat? Millett explains that risk level can be assessed based on two distinct criteria: likelihood and potential impact.

When the INF was signed into effect by Former U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, it led to the elimination of nearly 2,700 short- and medium-range missiles. More significantly, it helped bring an end to a dangerous nuclear standoff between the two nations, and the trust that it fostered played a critical part in defusing the Cold War.

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